In a weird turn of events, Internet Explorer 6 and Windows XP both increased …

It may be 2012, but apparently someone hasn't got the message. Internet Explorer's share of the desktop browser market grew in January, and most of that growth was due to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 6 only runs on one supported operating system, Windows XP, and that too gained market share last month.

On the desktop, Internet Explorer gained 1.09 points for a share of 52.96 percent. Firefox dropped 0.95 points to 20.88 points. For the first time since its launch, Chrome's share also fell, down 0.15 points to 18.94 percent. Safari declined slightly, down 0.07 points to 4.9 percent, and Opera was essentially unchanged, up 0.01 points to 1.67 percent.

Chrome's slight drop in share is a first. Until January, Google's browser had showed robust, vigorous growth, and the reversal of that growth is surprising. One possible explanation is that Google penalized the Page Rank of Chrome's own website on January 3, after it emerged that sponsored blog posts promoting the browser had been made, in contravention of Google's spam-prevention rules. To penalize this action, the Chrome site had its rank set to zero for 60 days, pushing it much lower down Google's search rankings.

The version breakdowns show where Internet Explorer's biggest gains have come from. Two-thirds of Internet Explorer's growth came from Internet Explorer 6, with the rest split evenly between versions 7, 8, and 9. The ancient browser is now used by 8.38 percent of Internet users, up from last month's 7.66 percent.

Operating system market share figures from Net Market Share, the source we use for our browser statistics, provides some explanation. Windows XP's market share grew last month, rising by 0.67 points to 47.19 percent. At the same time, Windows 7 lost share for the first time since its introduction, falling 0.59 points to 36.40 percent.

Windows XP ships with Internet Explorer 6, and can only run Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and so increased use of that ancient operating system is likely to stimulate increased usage of those legacy browsers.

The version breakdowns for Chrome and Firefox show the same pattern we have come to expect. Chrome's mysterious hardcore set of reluctant upgraders continues to account for more than ten percent of the browser's usage. Firefox's userbase continues to be split between those on the rapid release track and those on the non-rapid-release 3.6 track.

Looking forward, we might expect those 3.6 users to start migrating to Firefox 10. Released on January 31, Firefox 10 is a dual release. For consumers, there is the regular rapid release version that will be replaced with Firefox 11 in six or so weeks. For organizations, there is the Extended Support Release that will receive patches for approximately the next year. Firefox 3.6 will continue to be supported until April 24, when Firefox 12 is released, giving organizations 12 weeks to test and validate Firefox 10.

The Internet Explorer version breakdown should also start to shift. In January Microsoft started delivering Internet Explorer 9 as an automatic, noninteractive update in Australia and Brazil. Over the next few months, this will be extended globally. The update will only be given to those users who have not previously rejected the Internet Explorer upgrade, so will not reach every potential upgrader; nonetheless, it should tend to reduce usage of the older versions of the browser.

This is most likely a measurement error due to some changes in how the browser data is collected. The increase in IE6 and XP is a tell-tale sign since none of the possible explanations (piracy in China etc.) had a trend change recently.

Honestly IE6 growing? sounds like somebody changed the way statistics are calculated again.

I think IE6's rise for the month is seasonal. People are out of the office more in December in US/Europe for the holidays, and the office is where most IE6 installs are. So when they're not at work, they're not using IE6. It looks like it returned to what it was in October 2011. So I'm just inclined to think it was a seasonal effect on the data, not any change in the install base of the software.

I was thinking the same thing or possibly a company just reverted back to xp for some reason.

My father works for Agco and they just bought new laptops that came with windows 7 and they reverted back to xp.. makes no sense.

Might have to do with the work environment. I just deployed 130 desktops/laptops. All new equipment. All with Windows 7. Wiped out the partitions and laid XP on all of them. In my case we have not finished V&V'ing (Verification and validation) of all our software for ISO 9001 certification on the Win 7 platform. In our line of engineering shifting a decimal place could cost millions of dollars, or at worst lives, so everything has to be certified as compatible and that numbers generated are spot on accurate.

I'm surprised no one has thought of the possibility for increased use of Windows XP mode in Win7. I'm pretty sure it base installs with IE6. I have my instance upped to IE8, but I usually use chrome in it anyway.

I think Opera's 0.01% was me switching from Chrome. It's sad to see such a great web browser barely get noticed by users.

I create html5 pages with hype, and all the compatibility warnings I get are for IE6 (not surprising) and Opera 11.10. I'm not sure if it is such a good browser.

You do know that Opera 11.50 came out about 7 months ago, right? and we're now on 11.61 (5 days old)?I think your hype is mis-reading things (or you've got opera set in IE mode, where it reports itself to be IE6)

I'm almost certain that the chrome decline is from people using alternate browsers for viewing YouTube. Since the latest version of chrome (released about 3 weeks ago), the built-in flash player crashes the entire browser when you close a YouTube tab. The only way to fix it is to install (or switch to) the official adobe flash plugin, which I assume most folk don't do - as it isn't apparent that the flash player is causing it.

The fact that IE6 sees an increase most likely means there are unpatched XP machines out there with both IE6 and chrome on them - the horror!